The future of the MCU is a little fuzzy after Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home. What we do know is that at some point, mutants will be introduced into the franchise, The Eternals will shed some light on the deep history of the universe and we also know that the studio is eager to get Shang-Chi into production.
For those not familiar with the character, he’s known as the Master of Kung Fu, is an expert in weapon-based combat and also a sometime member of the Avengers. Information on the upcoming movie is pretty thin on the ground, but Deadline’s reporting that Marvel Studios is courting Destin Daniel Cretton to direct it.
Cretton’s currently helming Just Mercy (which he also wrote) with Michael B. Jordan and Brie Larson, and picked up a lot of positive attention with the excellent Short Term 12. While an impressive director in his own right, the choice indicates that Marvel Studios are eager to emulate the formula that made Black Panther such a hit. That film was conceived as an intrinsically black and African-American story about colonialism and race, and had a mostly black cast, writer and director.
In the wrong hands, the Kung Fu character of Shang-Chi could open up Marvel Studios to accusations of stereotyping (and indeed, he was created by Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart as a response to the popularity of the show Kung Fu). However, with a Chinese-American director (and writer in Dave Callaham of Wonder Woman 1984), we should hopefully get a movie that Chinese-American audiences will respond to. That it’ll inevitably go down swimmingly in the lucrative Chinese cinema market is just a cherry on top.
We should start hearing more about Shang-Chi once this summer’s MCU films are out of the way, and we’ll probably be seeing the movie in late 2020 or early 2021. Either way, let’s just hope it’s an improvement on the similarly themed MCU show Iron Fist.
